I had a friend who was an art history major in college and then went to law
school to become a lawyer. My junior college computer teacher told me, "Get
a degree in anything and then go into computers." A person can have a good
career in art if they start young and don't wait until 55 like I did.
However, I did design ads for my own little neighborhood newspaper, AND the
newspaper layout, for ten years before I went back to college to get a BA,
an MA and a teaching credential. So your disgruntled parent may not see any
practical value in art, but there is really a lot of value in art.
I had fun substitute teaching first day back at school yesterday in an inner
city high school in San Francisco. I went around from desk to desk asking
each individual how their vacation was and what they did. It put them all
in a good mood, I think. I know it put me in a good mood to hear what all
those teenagers did. They hadn't seen each other for two weeks and they had
so much news to catch up on! It was a media arts class, where the regular
teacher had left a lesson plan to write a synopsis of the stories in today's
newspaper. They could write about tsunamis, torture, how their school was
nearly last in the basketball league, that kind of thing. They could really
get down on that, as we used to say, whatever that meant.
Art is a form of communication, and communication is a basic skill, they
told me in college.
